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Thursday, October 25, 2012

The Obama-Romney Foreign Policy Debate

by Michael Kaplan

Compared to the first two presidential
debates the third debate, the one on foreign policy, at Lynn University in Boca
Raton, Florida on Monday, October 22 was something of a snooze. There were no fireworks between
President Obama and Governor Romney both of whom focused on not doing any
harm to themselves.The video of the debate is posted below and here and here. You can find the transcript here and here.

Overall Romney came off quite well. He gave
the impression of being a sober and thoughtful statesman, while President Obama
came across as peevish and petulant. Charles Krauthammer comments that “Romney
went large, Obama went very, very small, shockingly small.” Romney’s strategy
in the debate was to avoid going down in the mud with Obama and appear
presidential. He succeeded in that. Indeed, Romney looked more presidential
than the president. I would have liked Romney to be more aggressive, especially
on the Obama Administration’s cover up of the terroristattack by Ansar al-Sharia on the American consulate in Benghazi,
Libya. Bill O’Reilly suggests that Romney did not want to appear
confrontational because it would be a turn off to women voters. Perhaps that is
so. Anyway, if Romney does not win the election on November 6, it will not be
because of his performance in the debates.

The main point I came away with from
the debate was that Romney and Obama differ more in style and optics than in
substance when it comes to foreign policy. Romney would present a tougher, more
Jacksonian face of America to the world, while keeping in place many of Obama’s
policies—policies that Obama himself inherited from George W. Bush. This is
only natural. America’s geopolitical interests have a continuity over the long
term that transcends the four or eight years of any administration. Democratic and Republican presidents from Truman through Reagan pursued the Cold War strategy of containment for forty years until the Soviet Union collapsed. Robert
Merry, editor of The National Interest,
a leading journal of the realist school of foreign policy, observed that “the
Republican candidate who presented himself to the American people on
foreign-policy issues came across as measured, moderate, informed and capable
of handling complex issues with nuance and balance.” On Syria, for example,
Romney would not intervene directly in that nation’s bloody civil war—there will
be no American boots on the ground. But he would like to provide arms and
assistance to some of the rebel groups to encourage a pro-American post-Assad
regime and short-circuit the growing influence of the Islamists. Romney will
continue to use sanctions against Iran, though he said he would make them tougher and
more effective than Obama has, and would order a military strike against Iran’s
nuclear facilities only as a last resort. Romney also plans to carry through
on Obama’s commitment to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan by the end
of 2014. And of course he praised the president’s decision to send SEAL Team
Six after Osama bin Laden. Romney understands that Jacksonian America will not
support any further nation building in the Muslim world. The American people
have spent enough blood and treasure in what has become a Sisyphean
task.

Where Romney did distinguish himself from
Obama was in his commitment to a Reaganesque policy of peace through strength. On
how to engage with the Muslim world going forward, Romney said this:

Well,
my strategy is pretty straightforward, which is to go after the bad guys, to
make sure we do our very best to interrupt them, to kill them, to take them out
of the picture. But my strategy is broader than that. That’s important, of
course. But the key that we’re going to have to pursue is a pathway to get the
Muslim world to be able to reject extremism on its own. We don't want another
Iraq. We don’t want another Afghanistan. That’s not the right course for us.

The
right course for us is to make sure that we go after the people who are leaders
of these various anti-American groups and these jihadists, but also help the
Muslim world. And how do we do that? A group of Arab scholars came together,
organized by the U.N., to look at how we can help the world reject these
terrorists. And the answer they came up with was this: One, more economic
development. We should key our foreign aid, our direct foreign investment—and
that of our friends—we should coordinate it to make sure that we push back and
give them more economic development. Number two, better education. Number
three, gender equality. Number four, the rule of law. We have to help these
nations create civil societies.

So Romney would embrace the Arab Spring
governments, including democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood governments,
and promote American influence through foreign aid and investment. But Romney
would make such aid conditional and use it to nudge leaders such as Egypt’s
President Mohamed Morsi away from Islamic supremacism and onto a path that could
in time create a civil society that reconciles Islam with liberal democracy.
Whether this can be done is the big unanswered question of the Arab Spring.
Islamic supremacism and the advance of the Jihad may yet prevail as Andrew McCarthy and Michael J. Totten argue. But the
previous “realist” policy of unconditional support for the mukhabarat (secret police) states
of Hosni Mubarak and his ilk in the Arab world has reached a dead end. Indeed it
was these sterile Soviet-style autocracies which suffocated the aspirations of
their young people for liberty, dignity, and upward mobility that produced Al Qaeda in
the first place. As former C.I.A. analyst Bruce Reidel writes, reformers in the
new Arab Spring governments “are trying to build more accountable and
democratic regimes that don’t repress their own people. These new governments
are trying to do something the Arab world has never done before—create
structures where the rule of law applies and the secret police are held
accountable to elected officials.” Reidel also admits “that is a tall order,
especially when terrorists are trying to create chaos.” Mitt Romney understands
this and appreciates that working with the new populist Arab regimes will be
more complicated than working with the old dictators. But the long-term positive
transformation of repressive societies is never simple or easy.

Engagement with the Arab Spring,
however, does not mean apologizing for America. Romney was at his strongest
when he blasted President Obama for his apology tours in the Middle East,
Europe, and Latin America. These apology tours projected weakness instead of strength
and it only encouraged the bad actors of the world to treat America with
contempt. “I think from the very beginning,” Romney said, “one of the
challenges we’ve had with Iran is that they have looked at this administration
and felt that the administration was not as strong as it needed to be. I think
they saw weakness where they had expected to find American strength.” Nothing
is more galling to Jacksonians than the projection of weakness. And in the high
stakes world of international politics projection of strength isn’t everything,
it’s the only thing (h/t Vince Lombardi). Romney went on:

And
then the President began what I’ve called an apology tour of going to various
nations in the Middle East and criticizing America. I think they looked at that
and saw weakness. Then when there were dissidents in the streets of Tehran, a
Green Revolution, holding signs saying, is America with us, the President was
silent. I think they noticed that as well. And I think that when the President
said he was going to create daylight between ourselves and Israel, that they
noticed that as well.

President Obama was visibly annoyed by
Romney’s characterization of his foreign trips. But the governor stood his ground.

Mr. President,
the reason I call it an apology tour is because you went to the Middle East and
you flew to Egypt and to Saudi Arabia and to Turkey and Iraq. And, by the way,
you skipped Israel, our closest friend in the region, but you went to the other
nations. And, by the way, they noticed that you skipped Israel. And then in
those nations, and on Arabic TV, you said that America had been dismissive and
derisive. You said that on occasion America has dictated to other nations. Mr.
President, America has not dictated to other nations. We have freed other
nations from dictators.

This was Romney’s best line of the entire
debate. It showed his determination to clothe American foreign policy in the
unswerving Jacksonian commitment to liberty through strength. The President of
the United States never apologizes for America. He trumpets American
exceptionalism to the world. He keeps the Ahmadinejads of the world off balance
with the hint that he will use American might to pound them into the dust if
they don’t take America’s demands in diplomatic negotiations seriously. Again the purpose of a strong
military is to keep the peace by not having to use it too often. As Theodore
Roosevelt understood, the Big Stick of the military is best kept in reserve to back
up the softer more conciliatory voice of diplomacy. Mitt Romney also
understands this. While he may continue much of the Obama foreign policy in
practice, by presenting it to the world in Jacksonian colors he will project
the strength needed to preserve peace and advance American interests in the
world.

3 comments:

Well put Michael and I am in complete agreement with all you said. I felt eh in fact was being himself and if anyone has done their homework, one knows Mitt is a middle of the road conservative at best, not hard right as some would want. Still much better than what we have now.On a different subject, a question. how do you feel about the Democrats requesting U.N. monitoring of our polling places? This in my view is beyond scary and is another example of this President not only giving up sovereignty but in my view once again vilifying the citizenry of this country.

Yes, Mitt is not hard right. He's a pragmatic center right conservative businessman who knows how to manage the economy. Right now that really is what we need. I think he has shown he's conservative and Jacksonian enough to do the right things for the nation.

These U.N. monitors are a disgrace. Monitors from Belarus are going ensure that an American election is fair! Ha! The liberal groups that want these monitors might well use them to try to suppress the conservative vote. We shall see.

I wanted to touch base and get your slant as to what's been going on the last few weeks. I kinda let go really good on my blog today,in effect letting all of my frustrations out, but I really want to dig into this deeper and try to put it into some sort of context without my emotions in the way.